Ramshackle Review

Two Poems by L. Ward Abel 

The Past Ends Now

I left my heart and soul
in a covered bridge
and I forgot the way there
the creek was high
the color of marrow
deep woods and who I’ve become.

Still there’s dust when anyone passes
ruts where tires cut
something poignant has happened too
something is more than lost.



Big House
(To Duane Allman)

I.
Six strings rang clean
like the first morning chill
two wings from
a movie or myth or religion
the sky shone like
a haphazard palette like
something God spilled like
six strings two wings
and the sky.

II.
The three of them
are a trio these days
a long standing one
that
as perfect as they may have been
now they trace the lines
of heaven
Trane Miles and Skydog
play unrecorded
nothing remembered
just songs as they happen forever.

III.
Tonight a hundred years later
lightning flashes distant
above Hillcrest at Bartlett
and upon seeing that site
nondescript void of a marker
someone can meditate there
only if they have a map
but it glows with broken
pavement scars 
O killed in such a
nothing setting
half lit by storms
off in Crawford County.

IV.
At Snow’s Chapel
they all came in tribute
out of respect for him
while in the private family room
where bodies are viewed
someone put a slide on his finger
put contraband in his shirt pocket
nobody brought Ormond
beach sand or pieces of the
Fillmores because they
were intangibles
like he
now was.




Poet, composer of music, lawyer, aspiring teacher and spoken-word performer, L. Ward Abel lives in rural Georgia, and has been published at The Reader, The Yale Anglers’ Journal, Versal, The Pedestal, Pale House, Kritya, Ditch, Open Wide, Moloch, Legal Studies Forum, and hundreds of others.  Abel has recently been nominated for “Best of the Web” by Dead Mule and The Northville Review.  He is the author of  Peach Box and Verge (Little Poem Press, 2003), Jonesing For Byzantium (UK Authors Press, 2006), The Heat of Blooming (Pudding House Press, 2008), and the forthcoming American Bruise (Parallel Press).